BERLIN (GERMANY)
News in Germany [Berlin, DE]
April 18, 2023
An external commission analyzed the sexualized abuse in the Archdiocese of Freiburg. There are also allegations against two former bishops.
“We have no praise to give,” was the summary of retired judge Eugen Endress on Tuesday morning. During the presentation of the results of the report on sexualized violence in the Archdiocese of Freiburg, he got angry after a few minutes. For Endress, the procedure in Freiburg, as the sexualized abuse was covered up for years, seems almost absurd.
He describes things that have also become clear in other reports of abuse: accused priests were systematically protected by the church institution for years through transfers, but not children. Assaults and violence were trivialized by those responsible and also in the communities, evidence of the knowledge of abuse by those responsible disappeared.
Victims of sexualised violence have been waiting for the report of the independent working group “Power Structures and File Analysis”. October 2022. Actually, the report should have been presented there. However, due to legal concerns, the release was pushed back to April 2023. Those affected criticized this as a pretext and saw too little willingness to clarify.
The commission of external retired experts from the judiciary and the criminal police was able to dispel this suspicion this Tuesday. But: Your report contains strong allegations, in particular against the former archbishop Oskar Saier, who died in 2008, and Robert Zollitsch, who is still alive. During their tenures in the Archdiocese, both systematically prevented investigations into child abuse. In the opinion of the Commission, Zollitsch bears a particularly great responsibility, since he had already worked as a personnel officer in the diocese for 30 years before his appointment to archbishop in 2003. From 2008 to March 2014 he was also chairman of the German Bishops’ Conference.
Logs disappeared “due to moving”
In the report, the commission analyzed 24 cases of sexual abuse in the archdiocese as examples. As part of the published in September 2018 MHG study In the Archdiocese of Freiburg, 190 people were accused of sexualised violence from 1964 to the end of 2015, and at least 442 victims were named. The commission has now corrected these numbers to at least 540 victims and 250 demonstrably accused priests. The number of unreported cases is as in already other published opinions on sexualized violence in the Catholic Church is estimated to be significantly higher.
Since February 2019, the commission had interviewed 180 people, including 20 victims of sexualised violence. They also evaluated all the minutes of committee meetings that the incumbent Archbishop of Freiburg, Stephan Burger, was able to make available to them.
However: For many years of the examined period from 1978 and 2014 there are hardly any files or very incomplete files, criticized Endress. Some had disappeared “due to relocation”. There is no record of the reasons for accused priests who were suddenly “retired”. In other areas, however, such as financial matters of the communities, a lot was written down. Only in the case of allegations of abuse of children, there is no documentation: “The pen was apparently empty,” said Endress. “As far as the handling of the written material is concerned, there must have been consensual action between Archbishop Oskar Seier and his HR officer Robert Zollitisch.”
Seier was the 13th Archbishop of the Archdiocese of Freiburg from 1978 to 2002. The commission attests him a “deliberate ignorance” in dealing with accused clerics. “Basically, he didn’t want to know anything about any of this,” says Endress. During his term of office he had the motto “I will not let anything get past my priests”. Those affected obviously played no role for this bishop. Only the protection of the church was important, according to Endress.
The commission explained that sexualized violence had been trivialized by those responsible for years and that pressure was also exerted by communities on people who drew attention to abusers.
It was also particularly impressive for the commission that former Archbishop Robert Zollitsch had a priest who had consensual sex with adult women sentenced for violating celibacy according to canon law. He did not punish child abuse by priests during his tenure. The report describes in detail the case of a priest who has been accused of multiple crimes. In a conversation with Zollitsch, he said, “A little boy doesn’t notice that if you put your hand in his pants.” The only reaction of the former archbishop was that he advised the priest to get in touch with a psychologist.
Criticism of the predecessors
Archbishop Stephan Burger also admitted after the publication that he had made mistakes and criticized the behavior of his predecessors. “It stunned me that both acted against their better judgment,” said Burger. The archbishop himself did not announce any personal consequences; possible canonical consequences for his predecessor Zollitsch would have to be decided in Rome. Burger is one of the bishops involved in voting on reform texts within the framework of the synodal pathsuch as opening up celibacy for priests.
The Archdiocese of Freiburg is the third largest diocese in Germany and has so far paid 3.1 million euros in compensation to victims of sexualised violence.